Chris Bohjalian's Blog - Posts Tagged "easter"
Fit to be (neck) tied? Yes. Today.
Other than weddings and funerals, there are only two times a year when I am likely to wear a necktie to the church here in Lincoln, Vermont: Christmas Eve and today, Easter Sunday. This is true with the vast majority of men in the congregation. There are usually 100 to 125 people in the sanctuary most Sundays, maybe 40 of whom are adult males, and other than our pastors and Mike Harding — who is jaunty enough to pull off a bow tie — it’s rare to see more than a necktie or two. We are, after all, a rural congregation halfway up Vermont’s third highest mountain.
But I’d wager that the dress code has grown more casual at most churches — much as it has on most airlines. We used to dress up for church and when traveling on a jet. These days, if it’s a warm morning in July, people will wear flip-flops on otherwise bare feet in both a sea level church and when traveling at 35,000 feet. (Reason number 17 why we need to cut the women and men with the TSA a little more slack: all those bare feet in the TSA body scanners.)
Now, my point is not to sound like a fuddy-duddy curmudgeon decrying how these days we all dress like teenagers on springbreak. I have absolutely no desire to wear a necktie to church more than two or three times a year. And if someone (not me) wants to walk around barefoot in the security line at Burlington International Airport, that’s between them and their travel-size tubes of Tinactin.
But I do love the way that even in a small rural church here in the middle of Vermont we still don our Sunday finest come Easter morning. There are actual bonnets in the sanctuary. There are men in neckties. There are women in heels. It’s terrific.
When I was a little boy, I had what could be called my Easter uniform because I only wore it on Easter: White shirt, clip-on red necktie, blue blazer. It was weirdly patriotic. And while the necktie is as red in my memories as it is in the Kodachrome photographs I found a few years ago in my father’s old photo albums, it’s a far cry from a Wall Street power red. It’s more like Easter egg red — a pastel. Besides, it’s a clip-on. How powerful can a clip-on necktie ever be?
Still, give me a necktie and I feel pretty darn dashing. This is true, apparently, even when I am wearing a clip-on. Exhibit A? One Sunday morning when I was a little kid in church in that blue blazer and red clip-on, I stood up in the pew while the rest of the congregation had their heads bowed in silent prayer and broke the quiet by shouting at the top of my lungs, “Sugar Pops are tops!” The way my parents would tell this story years later, my mom instantly reached out with one arm and took my knees out from under me, so I fell back into the pew like a marionette whose strings have been cut.
David Wood, the pastor at the United Church of Lincoln, has a collection of ties that can only be called ... eccentric. I have seen him preach in Veggie Tales ties, Peanuts character ties, and Star Trek ties. And yet, somehow, he pulls it off. The look might not get five stars from the fashion police on TV, but it works here in Lincoln.
And it works here on Easter. Year after year, the church is never more crowded than it is today. This is the case with most churches. After all, churches everywhere right now are celebrating the reality that even in a world where it sometimes seems as if the jaded rule and snark is king, there is still room for faith and hope ... and joy. And I can’t think of a better reason to get dressed up and wear a necktie.
Happy Easter. Happy Passover. Peace.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on March 31, 2013. Chris's new novel, "The Light in the Ruins," arrives July 9.)
But I’d wager that the dress code has grown more casual at most churches — much as it has on most airlines. We used to dress up for church and when traveling on a jet. These days, if it’s a warm morning in July, people will wear flip-flops on otherwise bare feet in both a sea level church and when traveling at 35,000 feet. (Reason number 17 why we need to cut the women and men with the TSA a little more slack: all those bare feet in the TSA body scanners.)
Now, my point is not to sound like a fuddy-duddy curmudgeon decrying how these days we all dress like teenagers on springbreak. I have absolutely no desire to wear a necktie to church more than two or three times a year. And if someone (not me) wants to walk around barefoot in the security line at Burlington International Airport, that’s between them and their travel-size tubes of Tinactin.
But I do love the way that even in a small rural church here in the middle of Vermont we still don our Sunday finest come Easter morning. There are actual bonnets in the sanctuary. There are men in neckties. There are women in heels. It’s terrific.
When I was a little boy, I had what could be called my Easter uniform because I only wore it on Easter: White shirt, clip-on red necktie, blue blazer. It was weirdly patriotic. And while the necktie is as red in my memories as it is in the Kodachrome photographs I found a few years ago in my father’s old photo albums, it’s a far cry from a Wall Street power red. It’s more like Easter egg red — a pastel. Besides, it’s a clip-on. How powerful can a clip-on necktie ever be?
Still, give me a necktie and I feel pretty darn dashing. This is true, apparently, even when I am wearing a clip-on. Exhibit A? One Sunday morning when I was a little kid in church in that blue blazer and red clip-on, I stood up in the pew while the rest of the congregation had their heads bowed in silent prayer and broke the quiet by shouting at the top of my lungs, “Sugar Pops are tops!” The way my parents would tell this story years later, my mom instantly reached out with one arm and took my knees out from under me, so I fell back into the pew like a marionette whose strings have been cut.
David Wood, the pastor at the United Church of Lincoln, has a collection of ties that can only be called ... eccentric. I have seen him preach in Veggie Tales ties, Peanuts character ties, and Star Trek ties. And yet, somehow, he pulls it off. The look might not get five stars from the fashion police on TV, but it works here in Lincoln.
And it works here on Easter. Year after year, the church is never more crowded than it is today. This is the case with most churches. After all, churches everywhere right now are celebrating the reality that even in a world where it sometimes seems as if the jaded rule and snark is king, there is still room for faith and hope ... and joy. And I can’t think of a better reason to get dressed up and wear a necktie.
Happy Easter. Happy Passover. Peace.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on March 31, 2013. Chris's new novel, "The Light in the Ruins," arrives July 9.)
The sun does indeed rise -- especially today
If you’re the Easter Bunny, some years you just have to pull a rabbit out of a hat. Some Aprils, you have to deal with blizzards – and, thus, snow bunnies in Vermont. Sometimes in March, you find nothing but dust bunnies under the beds when you’re hiding the eggs. No matter what, you always have to be quick like a bunny. And you have to distribute all those baskets and all those eggs without anyone ever seeing hide nor (forgive me) hare of you.
And then, I imagine, there are the houses with cats and dogs and. . .chefs. We have six felines in our home, and most of them are scaredy cats. Most of them are utterly terrified of our neighbors’ chickens. Or, they are such lazy and inept hunters that they couldn’t catch a mouse in a lobster pot. But not all. Our cat Funny Face is eighteen pounds of muscle and claw, and while he has a sweet disposition, his strong suit is not judgment: I’d hate to see him wake up in the middle of the night when the Easter Bunny is in our kitchen. It wouldn’t be pretty. We’re talking hasenpfeffer.
My point? It’s not easy to be the Easter Bunny. It is probably easier than being Santa Claus, since the loads are smaller. Most of the time, you only bring what will fit in a basket. But you also do the work without elves and reindeer. I’ve never imagined that the Easter Bunny has anywhere near the backend operation that Santa Claus has.
One year when our daughter was still in elementary school, my family spent an Easter on Grand Cayman. Later, she admitted to her mother and me that she had been worried the Easter Bunny wouldn’t know where she was, and she’d wake up on Sunday morning without a basket. But then she said reminded herself that he’d never let her down yet. It was all about faith.
And, indeed, the Easter Bunny found her. Sure, an investigative journalist might have noted that the basket had been filled at least in part from the hotel gift shop. But the Bunny delivered.
I asked her the other day for some of her favorite Easter memories, and they included that moment on Grand Cayman, when she awoke and saw an Easter Basket on the floor of the hotel room. But they also included looking for Easter eggs at her godparents’ home around the corner from us here in Lincoln, and how their older son – a boy in her grade – always looked so uncharacteristically dressed up in his blazers and bowties. Her favorite memories also included the dresses she would wear to church those Easter mornings, and the bonnets her mother found for her some of the years. And while our church doesn’t hold Sunday school on Easter itself, her memories included the different Sunday school teachers she had over the years, and the way she learned the miracle of the Easter story itself – the bedrock of our own family’s faith.
Easter is like that: A combination of secular and the spiritual implausibilities. A miraculous bunny. An inexplicable resurrection. It is, like all religions, about faith. And one thing I believe for sure is this: The world is a better place when it is rich in faith, and – to paraphrase Corinthians – when together we abide in love.
It may be harder sometimes to have faith when you are fifty years old than when you are five. The implausibilities are a little more glaring. Sometimes the Easter Bunny doesn’t find the little girl. Some dark nights the tectonic plates beneath us (and inside us) shift. Some bleak days we are painfully aware of how little we can ever control or how little we can really heal or how little we can actually accomplish. But as C. S. Lewis, wrote, “Faith. . .is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.” The truth is, the sun really does rise. . .always. Especially today.
Happy Easter. Happy Passover. Peace.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on April 20, 2014. The paperback of Chris's most recent novel, "The Light in the Ruins," arrives on Tuesday.)
And then, I imagine, there are the houses with cats and dogs and. . .chefs. We have six felines in our home, and most of them are scaredy cats. Most of them are utterly terrified of our neighbors’ chickens. Or, they are such lazy and inept hunters that they couldn’t catch a mouse in a lobster pot. But not all. Our cat Funny Face is eighteen pounds of muscle and claw, and while he has a sweet disposition, his strong suit is not judgment: I’d hate to see him wake up in the middle of the night when the Easter Bunny is in our kitchen. It wouldn’t be pretty. We’re talking hasenpfeffer.
My point? It’s not easy to be the Easter Bunny. It is probably easier than being Santa Claus, since the loads are smaller. Most of the time, you only bring what will fit in a basket. But you also do the work without elves and reindeer. I’ve never imagined that the Easter Bunny has anywhere near the backend operation that Santa Claus has.
One year when our daughter was still in elementary school, my family spent an Easter on Grand Cayman. Later, she admitted to her mother and me that she had been worried the Easter Bunny wouldn’t know where she was, and she’d wake up on Sunday morning without a basket. But then she said reminded herself that he’d never let her down yet. It was all about faith.
And, indeed, the Easter Bunny found her. Sure, an investigative journalist might have noted that the basket had been filled at least in part from the hotel gift shop. But the Bunny delivered.
I asked her the other day for some of her favorite Easter memories, and they included that moment on Grand Cayman, when she awoke and saw an Easter Basket on the floor of the hotel room. But they also included looking for Easter eggs at her godparents’ home around the corner from us here in Lincoln, and how their older son – a boy in her grade – always looked so uncharacteristically dressed up in his blazers and bowties. Her favorite memories also included the dresses she would wear to church those Easter mornings, and the bonnets her mother found for her some of the years. And while our church doesn’t hold Sunday school on Easter itself, her memories included the different Sunday school teachers she had over the years, and the way she learned the miracle of the Easter story itself – the bedrock of our own family’s faith.
Easter is like that: A combination of secular and the spiritual implausibilities. A miraculous bunny. An inexplicable resurrection. It is, like all religions, about faith. And one thing I believe for sure is this: The world is a better place when it is rich in faith, and – to paraphrase Corinthians – when together we abide in love.
It may be harder sometimes to have faith when you are fifty years old than when you are five. The implausibilities are a little more glaring. Sometimes the Easter Bunny doesn’t find the little girl. Some dark nights the tectonic plates beneath us (and inside us) shift. Some bleak days we are painfully aware of how little we can ever control or how little we can really heal or how little we can actually accomplish. But as C. S. Lewis, wrote, “Faith. . .is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.” The truth is, the sun really does rise. . .always. Especially today.
Happy Easter. Happy Passover. Peace.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on April 20, 2014. The paperback of Chris's most recent novel, "The Light in the Ruins," arrives on Tuesday.)
